You are now ready with your pitch deck and detailed financial model. But you are finding it difficult to connect to investors on you business plan and get them to hear out in person. Sometimes mail bounces (ppts and excels are heavy files) . And you just wonder why did you even spend so much time in preparing this documents when the potential investors don’t even see it.
Now think from the perspective of your potential investors. They have too many such mails landing in their inbox everyday. They don’t have so much of time. And there is too much of ‘digital noise’ which reduces their attention span even more. Some of the old fashioned may get too over-whelmed by the elaborate excel based financial model you have created.
Well there are many ways out. One of them send something short and sweet – which will clog lesser MB in the mail box and they will get in two minutes.
Investographic. The new kid in the block. An offshoot of Infographics which I use in my digital marketing. One one pager graphics which covers the most important aspects of your plan. They will get in two minutes.
Here are a few tips of creating a good investographics
1. Have only the critical points displayed in the graphics- enough to make the investors interested. But not too much. Usual components are market size/opportunity, competition, team , revenue model, milestones achieved, funding requirement (and possible utilization)
2. Create a nice storyboard- a logical flow which connects immediately before you get into design.
3. If you don’t know how to create a “good” design (good means really good) hire a designer- its worth the effort. Ask him to create an editable version where you can play around with the copy. You will need frequent changes based on the inputs.
4. Make sure that the size is not huge. Tell your designer that. Ideally less than 1 MB.
5. Don’t overdo with numbers and colours. Too much of them have a repelling effect.
6. Have a cheat sheet/note ready on each of the elements you have mentioned in the Investographic. You will be asked to explain a few of them when you get the reply (yes finally!) from the prospective investor
7. Don’t just send out a mass mail when you send out the investographic. Personalise. Its worth the time.
Disclaimer: this does not mean you will have a queue of investors outside your house/office as soon as you send it out. It will all depend on the idea and viability . Also the current market trend. And many other factors.
But this keeps you a step ahead. Leverage that.
Hey, like to share your experience on investographics/visual business plans. I am all ears.
Photo Credit: I picked this up from CIIE iAccelerator Program where I got introduced to Investographics for the 1st time.
